In This Life Or The Next
by CradleToGrave
Summary: He promised he would come back. So whether it's five years from now, or fifty, I'll see him again. A series of short to long stories, canon, reincarnation and me just tormenting them. Spoilers for manga and anime. Any and every genre is fair game. RXC JXF
1. Mourning

In This Life Or The Next

Summary: "He promised he would come back. So whether it's five years from now, or fifty, I'll see him again." A series of short to long stories, canon, reincarnation and me just tormenting them. Spoilers for manga and anime. Any and every genre is fair game. RXC JXF RXK

Okay, this is straight from the manga and the anime spoilers I've read really confuse the hell of out me. Rosette is not Mary Magdalene's reincarnation. She is herself and nothing else, Mary died and never came back. Remington is a DEMON not an angel. His body is forty percent legion. Rosette is not a 'saint'. It was one of the more compelling messages of the series that despite the fact she was neither witch nor demon nor apostle nor prophet nor sinner Rosette was the strongest damn person there. Chrono killed Aion,dying himself in the process, reunited with Rosette only as she died. Joshua is no 'Apostle of Hope'.' Just good old Apostle, thanks, little kid wielding the power of the astra-lines. Chrono kissed Rosette before going off and getting himself killed, a satisfying end to that whole thing. Satella came back about seventy years later, only to find that Florette was gone and Azmaria, Chrono and Rosette had kicked off, but she agreed to live her life out in honor of their memories. Azmaria was allowed to grow old and got married (she had a grandson), though I don't exactly know what happened to them. I don't know what moron screwed up the anime, but they did a pretty thorough job on it.

Mourning

Rosette founding herself wandering more and more often these days. A waste, she knew, of the time she was stealing through sheer force of willpower. But, hell, she had saved the world, what more did anyone want from her? So thus it was no surprise when she found herself in a wing of Satella's _ridiculously_ big mansion she had never seen before.

Dusty floor. Steiner really was getting old.

Cracked walls. So was everything else.

Table with flowers. They had long since withered away.

Thus she happed upon a framed photograph. A grinning dark-haired woman, smile sweet mother-wide, her husband as close as he could get to her looking so satisfied. Then, a spitting image of the woman holding the hands...of a little girl...red hair... Three fat tears leaked out before the sobs came.


	2. Lamentation

In This Life Or The Next

Disclaimer: I really wish that I could come up with something half as brilliant as Chrono Crusade, but I'm still in the planning stage.

Chapter Two: Lamentation

"Az?"

"Oh, h-h-h-hi R-r-r-rosette."

"Oh, Az, you fell! Steiner! Joshua! Beth! Someone get your ass down here!"

She rushed over to her fallen friend looking her over with a critical eye noting the numerous bruises, a few cutes, and the fingers twisted at sick angles.

"Hehehe." Azmari began nervously. "Kind of makes you miss the old days, huh?"

Rosette turned so sharply the former apostle jumped. "What?" A horror-stricken angel's eyes widened. Then, slowly, the blondes shoulders went down, hackles fell, and the mouth turned upward a bit. "Azmaria, we all miss Chrono and Satella. It's all right if you want...to talk about them."

"That's not it...I mean...of course...Chrno...and Satella..."

"Azmaria...spit it out..."

"I know that it's...wrong...So many people...killed...but I really do..."

"Azmaria..." Her warning tone seeped out, so rarely did she direct it at her 'little sister' that the girl looked more frightened than she had all those million times they had saved each other. Then, suddenly, Rosette understood. The balcony from which the girl, more a woman now, had fallen. The fence was five feet tall. It hadn't rained in weeks. Azmaria's clumsiness had intensified and then gone with puberty, though she was still far from graceful. The ground underneath it was soft and mossy. "Did you _jump?"_

She started to shake her head and then burst into tears. "Yes!"

"We agreed, Az. That no one was going to do anything stupid. We're all already grieving enough. Losing you...by your own hand...Oh, god damnit."

"Oh, I wouldn't ever...never...it's not that at all..."

Rosette gazed around distractedly. "Move it! Beth! Her hand's broken..."

"I miss my wings!"

"What?"

"Oh, you can't understand...in the old days...I wouldn't have fallen...I would have flown." Her tone was almost wistful.

WHAP. Azmaria reeled back from the slap.

"What do you call that?" Rosette pointed angrily at her form...

...surrounded by the shadows of snowy white feathers.


	3. Interlude

Interlude

Okay...Here goes. I guess. Thanks for the reviews, they make my life. And I know it's kind of wierd I haven't done any that haven't been canon yet but they'll come. In good time. Oh, and Mourning was a major reference to the manga. In on of Satella's flashbacks there was a framed photo of her and her family. 'Kay? And honestly. Just review. It isn't that hard.

**LLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEE**

"I'm connected to him and I want to believe him." Had it been absolutely anyone else they would have never even considered it. Alas, with a ticking time bomb in the closet what choice did they have? After a little swearing, some incredibly vicious glares and clicks of metal she was connected again.

And she was going in deeper than she ever had.

His mind was a terribly strange place, she realized. It was crammed with centuries of memories, thoughts, knowlege, and people. No matter where she turned she ran into something new and dark and scary.

She had trembled and cried with the memories of the slaughers of ages hence and the overwhelming hungry sense of guilt that came with the making on a contract with one so young, wide-eyed and innocent, always at the forefront of his mind.

"Dumbass," Rosette would inform some of the memories tartly, "I'm hardly innocent anymore."

Thus she went deeper and deeper and stumbled into something she never saw coming. Her eyes widened slowly in the pure unadaltered surprise that she almost never expirienced anymore. Rosette had seen very many of the memories with her in them, but never...

At first glance, it seemed all right. Then, as you looked closer, certain things were noticed. She was only in a slip and bloomers, scarcley thick enough to cover...certain things.

Her face grew a shade that bore a remarkable resemblance to a tomatoe. From her chin to the roots of her hair the hideously bright red spread. She hadn't known a soul could blush.

Rosette was getting changed out of a uniform that was covered in...something, presumably the blood and innards of some poor bastard of a demon that had gotten in her way on a bad day.

She was getting undressed.

_And Chrono had been watching._

Though the girl was hardly a coward, she fled that area far too quickly to notice on certain half-buried fantasy, dream-like and hazy in quality as though it had been torn up many a time only to be resurrected. She was being kissed, and he was doing the kisssing.

**LLLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE**

The recovery had been perilous and heart-wrenching but a recovery nonetheless, and one could not be picky in these times. The nun hugged him. She told him that none of it was his fault. She told him that she had been so worried and missed him so much, though not with words. She told him at an unneccesarily loud volume that if he ever--and she meant EVER---pulled something like that again, Aion, Joshua and the Ten Commandments be damned she was going to kill him.

He took it all, smiling happily with over-bright eyes.

Then, when all of that business was done, Rosette looked the devil with a look that could skin stone and told him in a low voice that when it was all done he was going to pay.

Chrono only had to wonder which one she had seen.


End file.
